1.) Describe a memorable first date.
2.) Write about a child you find inspiring.
3.) What do you find most challenging about blogging?
4.) Name a pet peeve you have about how other parents raise their kids. Go on…stir the pot.
5.) We often spend time and energy talking about people in our lives we don’t see enough of. Describe a person in your life you are in contact with often. What does he/she mean to you?
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Ok, this week I am going with the fifth choice, I could easily write about how hard it is to blog. However, I thought I would write about someone special. I am no longer very good at expressing emotions or feelings, but I thought I would write about my best friend Paulette. Some know her best as "Ms P Drama" http://mspdrama.blogspot.com/ .
Anyone who watches us think that is amazing that we have conversations that very few can follow, our kids are the same age (right down to the middle child I miscarried), we are almost always chatting with each other through twitter, Facebook, and of course through text messages.
Around 16 years ago, there was a preppy upbeat cheerleader type junior and a fat, miserable socially unfit freshman. At first, neither one of us liked each other. I though she was a snob and I didn't fit into her group of friends. As usual, God had a plan because even though we were in different circles, different classes and had very little to nothing in common, we still ended up hanging out together.
Slowly at first, and within a year, we were ok friends. Not to terribly close, but we were talking and getting to know each other better. I had no idea that her hag of a sister was making her life a living hell and her stepmother was using everything good and turning them into weapons to crush and dominate her. She was very guarded and I was trying to understand why. I think the main thing that got the friendship rolling was a fateful birthday party.
I was turning sixteen and my Mom had agreed to let me have a slumber party with a small group of girls. Paulette was the only one not able to make it, and I was so disappointed till the next day. My other group of friends and I were having fun all the way up till almost midnight. I was the first to crash in the living room on Mom's bed. We had a two bedroom house, and mom sacrificed the rooms to my brother and I and converted the living room to her room. Anyways, that night a few horrid tricks were played on me and the end result was Mom calling seven very ticked off parents at 3am and everyone was kicked out of the house and I was left alone, crying, and mad as could be that everything went as it did.
Little did either of us know it, but that was the saving grace in my friendship with Paulette. I told her everything that happened and that I wasn't allowed to have anyone from the party over till Mom got over her mad and I was pretty sure I would be in college before that happened. Mom had met Paulette and decided that she was nice, polite, and should be a good influence. Oh boy, if she ever knew we would be in some SERIOUS trouble!
When Paulette was old enough, she received a modest inheritance from her Mom and went to get a red Nissan Ultima with the sunroof. It was one of the prettiest cars I had ever seen and was so jealous that she had a car before me. However, in no time, she was banging at the front door and helping Mom pry my tail end out of bed so that I could ride to school with her in the car. It was so nice, I only lived maybe five blocks from the high school. For the next few years we were thick as thieves. You never saw one of us without the other. Talking for endless hours on the phone and as Paulette got ready for graduation, the inevitable happened...both of us had to get jobs and at this time, she found the man she loves and has been married to for fifteen years.
After she graduated, she was working and getting ready for her wedding, and I was going to school and working part time. She went shopping with me for school clothes my senior year, and we hung out as often as where able to. The day of her wedding, I put in a request for an early off and the manager grudgingly gave it to me after I was moved from audience to maid of honor after her first choice went into labor. I was at the church with her Hubby and he was so worried that she was going to leave him at the alter, and she was with his Mom getting ready. On the way from the wedding, 103.7 KVIL played a dedication from the groom and dedicated "Your the Inspiration."
After that, things slowed down in our friendship. She was working and doing the married thing, and I was a senior in high school looking forward to when I would hit the same place in life that she was already at. The first week of September, we decided to do a "girls night out". We had no idea what movie we were seeing, what theater we were going to or what time any of the movies started. We were just going to roll with it and see what happened. After forty five minutes, we decided on ice cream and then we would pick up Paulettes' hubby.
For whatever reason, the ice cream didn't settle right and Hubby decided that he wanted to join us for the movie and this was before cell phones (yes I know...back in the days of dinosaurs and pagers). So, the hunt was on. We hit all of hubbys' friends till we came across a black Geo Metro. Excited, thinking that we had found his for sure, Paulette mentioned "Patrick's in for the weekend". While she ran in to see if her hubby was there, I layed the seat back and got comfy. She came out disappointed since he wasn't there, but Pat knew where a friend had moved to and offered to help. I made a comment about how cute his butt was, and since I very rarely made comments like that, the inner match maker caught and help onto that thought.
After the next stop, Paulette took me home and decided to find her Hubby alone. Little did I know what was really brewing. She snagged her hubby, his brother, Patrick and his brother and during their movie, she set me up with Patrick letting him know that if he was serious, he would have to make the first move and if I was hurt there would be hell to pay. The following February, Patrick and I were married.
For the next five years, we were both living our lives to the fullest and barely talked during that time. When I became pregnant with our first child, I wanted everyone to know but was not sure how to find Paulette. Pat knew what to do, he mailed a letter to her husbands' parents knowing that they would give it to them.
I was afraid that she had forgotten about me, or we would no longer get along since it had been so long. However, color me surprised when she was pregnant with their first child as well. Our due dates were only a month apart. Paulette had her son a little early, and my daughter was a little late, but they are very close in age. Since I was so close to delivery and it was icy out, Patrick suggested that we waited till Paulette and her son got home to visit. That way she could have a little bonding time. When I had my baby girl, she was there the day I delivered to visit, but I had a very difficult labor that ended with a crash c-section. While I was in recovery, she visited the nursery and met some of Patricks' family and then came to visit the next day. I remember her visiting the same time that my older brother visited, but he was making me laugh and in a morphine haze, I blinked away a lot of the visit, but I remembered she stayed as long as the nurse would allow.
Even though I am not much of a babysitter, I helped her as best as I could by watching her son while they worked, but over time became increasingly frustrated with the babysitting. Since we are so close, I was able to explain what was going on and she was so understanding! Once again, life picked up and we drifted a little bit.
I lost a pregnancy and then found out that I was pregnant again three years later. Paulette and I had been talking on and off, but because of how far apart we lived and gas prices we very rarely got to see each other.
Right after I told Paulette that I lost my pregnancy 2 days before Christmas, I went spiraling into depression and was trying very hard to get keep everyone away from close. With my sister in law pregnant (and I was throwing the baby shower) and Paulette also pregnant, I lashed out in sadness and anger. I was so bitter that the baby I named Charles Xavier would never be mine to love and hold. Paulette recognized what I was doing and refused to leave me alone. Taking it all in stride, including my temper tantrums and jealously, she became my anchor. In my deepest darkest hours even when my own husband was too busy to help, she did. Very patiently, she pulled me out of that black hole of despair and things slowly became better.
When she had her second baby, we started seeing each other much more often. She had been put on bed rest while pregnant, and I wanted to help her whenever I could. We started having our Moms night out and talking on the phone and before we knew it, once again we were both expecting babies. I found out first and this time was due a few months before she was. I was so scared for both of us. I had already lost two pregnancies and Paulette kept going into preterm labor. I was more worried that Paulette would lose her baby than I was about my pregnancy. I was now far along enough to know that this one would most likely make it, but I didn't want Paulette to ever have to deal with the loss of a pregnancy.
By now, we were both stay at homes and were hanging out as often as we could and sometimes as often as once a week and we rotated houses. When Paulette went to deliver her youngest daughter, I finally got to see her in to hospital. She never asked if I wanted to see her after she delivered her first little girl knowing that I would be unable to handle it, and I was NOT going to miss visiting her in the hospital this time. He had a fairly easy delivery and we chatted until Pat called me on the cell to let me know it was time to go. Reluctantly, I left and immediately made plans to visit at the beginning of the following week.
She still laughs about my reaction to her opening the door with her perfect pre-baby figure. I had stopped at the store on the way over and picked up a lasagna, and when she opened her door, my jaw dropped I said "I hate you" and handed her the lasagna. She has always been able to take my super dry dark sense of humor and run with it. I was very jealous that she had stayed so tiny and during my second c-section that they had to do an upward swing and I might never loose the tummy pooch because of it.
We were back to visiting every week alternating homes till I completely threw my back out of place and was unable to walk. Once again, darkness took over and I was so mad at everything. I was frustrated that I couldn't take care of my children, before thirty they were talking major reconstructive surgery on my back and there was a high chance of paralysis. With Pat working around the clock to cover bills, the housework fell behind and I was feeling like the biggest failure. A housewife that could not take care if the children, house, or husband. I had a lot of people helping me and I appreciated all the help, but I was so angry and the doctors said it would be six months to a year before I could do much more than move to the couch.
Paulette came and visited often and helped with the kids, cooking, and as much as the dump I lived in allowed, she cleaned. I was very ashamed of how I was acting, but over the years I have started to lose my ability to articulate how I feel to others. I can express anger, frustration, and jealousy very easily, but love, appreciation and happiness are very hard to express these days. Every time she came over, she was a ray of sunshine. I was always looking forward to seeing her and she was always there for me. Even when the pain meds made me loopy and crazier that normal.
When my daughter was six, she was sexually assaulted by my nephew. I wanted a gun and I wanted him in jail. He was prosecuted, sentenced and sent away to the STOP program. When I first heard the sentence and it seemed so light, I called my Paulette crying. It hurt to breathe and I didn't understand why I was denied my chance in court to tell them how my family had suffered because of what had happened. Paulette dropped everything, came over and took me to half priced books. She patiently listened to everything I had to say and even understood why even though I had always said there in never a need for violence that I NEEDED a gun. I WANTED to get revenge. She pointed out that we wouldn't be able to fulfill our dream of being crabby old ladies on the porch with our cats and dogs.
Over the next two years, she helped me deal with the frustrations of my past while taking my daughter to her councelling. My daughter has gotten past that and is living like a normal nine year old. When we can, we help each other any chance we can, and there is nothing that I wouldn't do for Paulette. She is like family to me, and ANYONE who hurts her, I plot against till she tells me, while laughing, that going to jail will not help our visiting.
Even as I type this, I have her girls while she takes her oldest to the dentist. We are chatting about the NKOTBSB concert she got us tickets to. We went on Sunday and had the very BEST of times! She got both of us a t-shirt and we had a BLAST! There are times when I wish I could tell her how much she means to me. She has always been there no matter what is going on. She has always been my anchor and ray of light. My kids love her to pieces and she has become family to us. I love her unconditionally (and for those with gutter minds - not in that way). My greatest wish is that her life is aways as bright as she helps mine to be. Everyone should be blessed with a best friend as great as mine.
